Writer and Director: Philippa Lawford
Quiet and quietly devastating, Philippa Lawford’s new play about depression is sometimes hard to watch. Ikaria charts the journey of a university student battling his inner demons. His decline is incremental and the play’s slow and steady pace captures all the horrors of this journey, which is likened to The Odyssey.
Simon is studying Classics at a fancy university. He’s just returned after taking a year off. He tells his new girlfriend Mia that his absence was down to glandular fever and because he was behind in one of his modules. Mia has no reason to disbelieve him in the early days of their relationship. She finds it funny when she discovers Simon has lived on a diet of Domino’s.
At first they seem oddly matched. Simon is from a wealthy family and has posh friends called Hugo, Harry and Tristan. He went to boarding school while Mia is from a state school and has never known her father. Simon isn’t a model student however; he misses deadlines and still hasn’t come up with his dissertation topic. In contrast, Mia has more to prove and starts to work on The Eagle, the university paper.
Their budding relationship is nicely realised, all taking place in Simon’s messy dorm room in a building named Ikaria, after the Greek island, where, he claims, people live to the age of 100. They are tender to each other and it seems as if they are to have a future. But the bad days begin to outnumber the good ones. Simon doesn’t want to leave his room, emails pile up unread and he loses his appetite.
Amaia Naima Aguinaga shows Mia’s concern and her desire to do the right thing. But she has a journey of her own; from timid fresher to someone who finds her confidence in writing. Aguinaga makes Mia feel real and when Mia and Simon are sat on his bed watching a film on the laptop, their limbs entwined, their relationship feels real too.
As Simon, James Wilbraham gives a beautifully understated performance and. although his scenes with Mia are utterly convincing, he shines in the few scenes when he’s alone on stage. At one point he shaves at a tiny sink and at another he dances to The Waterboys’ The Whole of the Moon, and these scenes prove to be the most painful, as Simon fights against a depression that threatens to overwhelm him. Wilbraham is breathtakingly good.
Everything about the production, including the light design by Shane Gill throwing Simon’s apartment into yellow dusk, is excellent apart from the final scene. In a play that never spells things out, this last scene is too dramatic, and too unambiguous. Ikaria would work better without out it, allowing the audience to draw its own conclusion with Homer’s words still echoing around the stage. But it’s the only misstep in this important play.
Runs until 19 November 2022
